In order to perform surgery on the eye it is frequently desirable to apply a surgical drape to the patient, first to isolate the eyelashes and eyelids from the surgical site to improve exposure of the eye, and provide a sterile drape surface to reduce the chance of infection. For example, in refractive surgery, draping may be primarily performed to pull eyelids and eyelashes away from the eye, and keep them out of the way of surgical instruments such as microkeratomes.
One product used for this purpose is the Model 1020 ophthalmic drape commercially available from the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, St. Paul, Minn. This drape includes a sheet of material having a generally round aperture in roughly the center. A field of skin compatible adhesive contacts a portion of one side of the sheet adjacent this aperture. This adhesive allows the drape to be adhered around the patient's eye, and the rest of the sheet drapes down over the patient's head, hair and face to provide a sterile surface over these areas.
A difficulty arises in that the eye is a delicate structure and the eyelids are very flexible and not the same size and shape in different individuals. In actual practice, sometimes medical practitioners find it inconvenient to conform the margins of the aperture to the edges of a particular patient's eyelids. When this occurs, one expedient that is known to some practitioners is to cut the drape, either partly or else completely into two sections, to relieve the tension in stretched areas or to prevent bunching of the adhesive, and allow the margin of the aperture to be more perfectly conformed to the margin of the patient's eye. In addition, cutting the drape before application is the preferred practice of many surgeons in order to facilitate one person applying the drape to the upper eyelid first without adhering the lower portions of the adhesive field to the lower eyelid until ready to do so.
It will be appreciated that this expedient is not without its drawbacks. Making such a cut during application will require the presence of a sterile scissors or the like. Also, making an appropriate cut is inconvenient to do while attempting to preserve the sterility of the drape.